Antinuclear

Why Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne want Bjørn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre

Why the Abbott government wants Bjørn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre, The Saturday Paper , 16 May 15  MIKE SECCOMBE
Covert negotiations, whispered announcements and an awkward about-face reveal a political agenda behind reaching consensus.  Mazzarol, Winthrop professor in the business school of the University of Western Australia, is reciting the long list of hoops a proponent must jump through to gain approval for a research centre at the university.

“Normally they have to demonstrate they will contribute to research output of the university and the reputation of the university,” he says. “They must have at least six full-time equivalent academic staff engaged in research at the university, a viable plan for the growth of the centre, the capacity to be self-sustaining. They must have an academic and a business plan, a clear indication of the resources, facilities, funding, negotiated targets for research, training, publication volume, output quality and how that will all be measured.”

He continues, citing the criteria listed on the UWA website: “It must also have the approval of the academic council, normally has to have an interdisciplinary role, and to have demonstrated consultation with other parts of the faculty that might be involved.”

The list of requirements and processes is detailed, but Mazzarol’s point is simple. “This one didn’t go through any of those steps.”

He is referring to an entity proposed by Danish climate change contrarian Bjørn Lomborg, ironically named the Australia Consensus Centre (ACC), whose establishment was secretively negotiated over six months, quietly revealed six weeks ago, and then abandoned after an ugly collision between academe and politics.

In the wake of that crash, only two things are clear. One is that Lomborg, academic darling of the political right for his views on climate change, will not get his “consensus” centre at UWA. The other: Mazzarol’s critique of the way by which the university’s executive went about approving the centre is quite right. It was a travesty of normal process, as even the university’s senior management has acknowledged.

Much else, however, remains unsettled. The affair raises questions about how far cash-strapped universities should go in accepting funds from sources with agendas that go beyond the purely academic, about the potentially corrupting influence of politics, about the rigour of methods and about amorphous notions of academic reputation.

Above all is the question implicit in UWA vice-chancellor Paul Johnson’s rather embittered statement announcing his university’s abandonment of the project. He referred to the “duty” of tertiary institutions in “actively encouraging the exploration of new ideas, challenging established thinking and posing the difficult ‘what if’ questions”…….

The matter may not yet be over. Christopher Pyne reacted to the university’s change of mind by suggesting the government might take legal action for breach of contract. He also confidently declared that the centre would be established at an alternative location. The $4 million is still there, itemised in the budget, waiting to be spent.https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/16/why-the-abbott-government-wants-bjorn-lomborgs-consenus-centre

May 18, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics, Western Australia